Sunday, August 2, 2020
Dear Matadors,
Welcome back historians in these very trying times. We start on distance learning on a quarter system on Monday, August 17, 2020. There are many new things that the course will be offering this year. There will be New grade scales/rubrics for digital learning [equity grading], history commonplace book, google classroom, google virtual classroom, new additions to our class website, social emotional learning and much more. We are also being asked to move to a quarter system which means that potentially we are looking at semester of history content into a quarter. But do not worry, we will go over all of it in the beginning as we get to know each other and throughout out time together. This will be new to all of us including me after 25 years of in-person classroom teaching.
If you are here you have found our class website for 2020-2021. This year could be one of the most interesting years of your life. The 2020 Presidential election will be the most important election ever in our countries history. Your job is to learn the history of our country so you will know how to conduct yourself as a citizen—and be the informed consent of the governed–to vote well. We hope you will learn and understand your interests and not be persuaded to vote against democratic principles. If you all try your best, we can possibly improve our system of democracy for all our families. We want you to be informed and safe.
We historians are still using the Four C’s [critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity], thinking maps, to improve many skills across the curriculum. In our class, we are also using the AVID: THE WRITE PATH and Eyewitness to the Past, for social studies. We will be creating a product we call the interactive student notebooks or scrapbook which will be for just compiling your key learnings. Most of your grades will be on history content standards and Eyewitness projects. Share the syllabus at home [Downloading due to Covid-19 and virtual academy] in the coming weeks to be clear about expectations and policies for our history class, to make learning positive for everyone.
While having a rational historical skill set, we will be working together into making you into HISTORIANS. Students in our United States history course will be learning ideas from our past to try and understand our present and future. Since K-6 you have studied history and the State of California calls these skills the CLIC. We will all learn more about historical thinking in the days to come.
Please consider your opinion about these two quotes:
“When history repeats itself the price of the lesson goes up.”
“History as a disciplined enquiry aims to sustain the widest possible definition of memory, and to make the process of recall as accurate as possible, so that our knowledge of the past is not confined to what is immediately relevant.”
Everyone is Living History! Students will be interviewing relatives and family members to learn more about their own history to understand space, place, and time. The more you know about your family the more you can understand the harder history. Our social contract is also in effect, just like every year in school, and we will be practicing those philosophies even online. We like to think of our scholarly path as readying you for high school, and we want you all to be life-long learners–Historians.
Please utilize this site as a resource as much as you can in class and at home. We will be using this for our may historical skill building. We will be referring back to this site each day, each week and all year long. Let’s have all our Baldwin Park families work together to make a great learning community. We are making history!
One of the most important things: sleep a minimum of 8 hours per night for the healthiest brain to be ready for learning. This will also help your social emotional learning. We should also mention the agenda check with parents; every Thursday you should receive handwritten initials from your parents. Please be mindful this entire year, giving a scholarly effort at all times. Students who use time well in class–virtual or in person–will have less catching up to do. We will explain more later.
Let us hope for another great year. Take care, and peace, love, and happiness historians!
Sincerely yours,
Mr. Torey Culbertson
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